Every bit as impressive

FLOW Review - STOZZ AUDIO

The Aurender Flow (V1000) is essentially a portable battery powered (7hrs) Amplifier and Dac Solution aimed at the audiophile market. The Flow ‘s designed to be used with headphones and it works with computers, idevice’s (using the camera kits cable) or an android device’s by way of OTG cable. In addition to the functions outlined above Aurender have came up with the rather clever idea of allowing users to install their own SSD hard drive (I used a 128gb model but up to 1TB is stupported) as a way of storing the often large media files that audiophiles are accustomed to owning. There is SPDIF (Optical) and USB input and an output in the way of ¼ inch jack. The DAC chip is the formidable dual Sabre ESS9018K2M which can hand both 24bit / 192khz and 32bit / 382khz respectively and features and OLED information display, A volume control dial and hardware power, play/pause, menu and skip buttons adorn the right hand side and all the above is put together in a rather unique looking aluminum body.

Aurender have came from relative obscurity to produce a product which I am pretty sure is about to light the audiophile world on fire. The Chord Hugo set the path last year for this sort of product and Aurender have made something that sounds every bit as impressive but massively undercutting its price by around $1000. The sound is excellent, matching many other high-end units and the decision to include a slot for SSD up to 1TB is genius especially in a world of paltry drives included with laptops. Battery life might not be the greatest at just 7 hours but its more than likely that you will be using the unit near a power source anyway as the size is just on the side of restrictive for truly pocketable use. All in its testament to the reality that high-end portable audio is growing and after a fair amount of years living with limited options in portable source components we are in the midst of a golden age.